Hospital Intensive Care Unit (ICU) workers are overwhelmed by alarms. Chemical and power industry standards for alarms provide that that one worker should be asked to respond to no more than 100-300 alarms per 12 hour shift. ICU nurses are routinely asked to respond to greater than 300 alarms in a shift (in some instances, greater than 1000), the vast majority (95%) of which are false or non-critical. The Joint Commission which accredits and certifies more than 20,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States, in 2013 issued a white paper outlining the problems of alarm fatigue, declaring it a frequent and persistent problem, and outlining proposals for alarm management.
In order to evaluate any change in alarm management, it is important to be able to initially quantify and monitor the alarm problem. By gathering relevant data at inception, any change, whether operational or due to an adjustment in alarm configuration and settings, can be measured. Currently there is no commercial solution to both continuously monitor the alarm environment, apply layers of intelligence to an alarm management solution, and compare the alarms to what is actually happening with the patient.